What will happen to all the ten year old electric cars?

[Theeaglesoared]

I'm thinking of buying an electric car. The price of second hand EVs has plummeted in recent months so I could now get a 1-2 year old EV for the same price as its petrol equivalent.

All well and good but it got me thinking: the batteries in EVs wear out after 100,000 miles or 10 years. A replacement battery is currently around £8000.

But will owners really replace the battery? On a 10 year old car? I can't see it happening. So are we going to see loads of cars effectively dumped in 10 years' time?

It seems massively bad for the environment but I can't find the answer to this anywhere! It probably won't put me off buying an EV (I don't want to lease for various reasons) but I am interested, because I assume my car will be worthless in a few years.

If anyone out there is in the car industry I'd love to hear your views.

Look, we need to be honest with ourselves and accept that in the UK, the climate means that cycling just isn't a viable alternative.

Despite your best intentions, I absolutely guarantee that no parent is going to put their kids (much less themselves) on bicycles to cycle two miles to do the school run. Not on a dark, freezing, wet, stormy morning in mid winter. Scandinavia is cold, very cold, but not very wet, and mostly flat, not the case in the UK. It's a lovely advertising pitch if you're in the bicycle business, but it's just not practical here in the UK.

The government will never publish anything to do the dirty little secret that is lithium mining, the reality would make the Just Stop Oil protesters look like environment terrorists.

Oil extraction is relatively safe, you pump the stuff out of the ground and pump watery mud back into the fissure to replace the oil and equalise the pressure. With mining you just create huge holes in the ground, have to find someplace to dump the spoils and then find another place to process the ore. Imagine that level or environmental damage on a mass scale.

As an aside, they have just started to tap an oil field in Namabia, which is the largest ever doscoverd and could supply the majority of the world's oil needs for decades to come. That's ONE refinery, in one country, not 1000s of lithium mines, spread across half the world.

We need to stop this EV nonsense.

@onefinemess

It is scary how much info is ignored, or even covered up, and how ignorant so many people are about the wider picture. EVs still emit harmful particulates, which cause breathing problems. There is the problem of battery fires, also kept very quiet about.

EVs rely on plastics to keep them as light as possible. Where does plastic come from? Oil and gas. How will we make all the renewable energy tech if we stop oil?

Im all for greater efficiency and reducing our consumption but it has to be done properly, not rushed through for huge profits and a quick political fix.

Its the same with the push for veganism, it’s based on half truths, misunderstandings and lies.

@onefinemess but it moves emissions from towns in the UK to cobalt mines in the Congo aka where their voters are not.

It sounds bad but one of the biggest pushes to sensible EV design is the fact that the resources for new current batteries are mostly controlled by China. It would be political suicide to let the global car industry be reliant on the goodwill of one country. I think we'll start seeing a lot more investment in alternatives, especially from Germany where the car industry makes up a huge part of the GDP.

OP, I work at a main dealer and I've asked lots of people what will happen to old electric cars once the batteries are shot, hold half the charge/range they once did and have long come out of the warranty

Nobody knows the answer

Nobody wants to consider this

I saw a test last year on an old electric Nissan. The guy driving needed the test early as he had so little faith in taking the car on the motorway and didn't trust the indicated mileage range

EV's are currently one of the most, if not the most, traded in cars

Needed = ended

@SecretVictoria - it's our second car & was purchased in 2015 for a specific commute - which (apart from the Lockdowns) it's done 5 days per week since then - hence the high mileage. It's the oldest model of i3 & almost all newer EV's do loads more miles per charge than this but this does what we need it to do & it's fun to drive & cheap to run.

I was pointing out the OP that the widespread idea that batteries wear out due to age or mileage has proved not to be true.

The 2nd car is used for towing, long journeys & holidays but it sits outside the house for weeks on end as the i3 is cheaper & more fun to drive.

We have a very old leaf. Done well over 100k miles and battery has degraded from 90 miles to 70 miles a charge. Costs me £5 a day for a full charge at current prices . I use it for school and local runs.

Following as was thinking of getting a second car now our kids are getting bigger. We've done well on just one for seven years but logistics are getting more complicated (we have horses kept a 15 min drive away and public transport not viable). I had a look at autotrader yesterday and was surprised at the cost of second hand Nissan Leafs (Leaves?!), I was expecting £10k but found some for £6k.

Despite your best intentions, I absolutely guarantee that no parent is going to put their kids (much less themselves) on bicycles to cycle two miles to do the school run. Not on a dark, freezing, wet, stormy morning in mid winter

We do this. Every single day (in the UK) regardless of weather. We have wet weather cycling gear. The only time we’ve not gone by bike is in heavy snow when the roads weren’t passable - but that was only once in 7 years.

what will happen to old electric cars once the batteries are shot, hold half the charge/range they once did and have long come out of the warranty

Nobody knows the answer

Nobody wants to consider this

^This.
It might be noble to say the batteries can be re used for powering your home... but then most households have 2 cars.
I think it's an environmental disaster in waiting.
Better stick with the devil we know until certain questions are answered.

Not forgetting that EVs have a higher carbon footprint than petrol or diesel cars over their lifetime & that's without factoring in the mass human slavery in the Democratic Republic of Congo to source the cobalt for the batteries.

But as long as the government can tick a box to say they've bought into the green washing then everyone can pretend they're doing something for the environment, instead of actually investing in new energy technology that might actually make a difference.

Battery degradation is totally overstated. We have a 12 year old leaf with 100km+ on it and it's only lost about 15km in range.

200+ is standard for a budget car now.

If it takes 45+ minutes to charge it at a petrol station, how do people manage to do long journeys? I feel offput by it all. And I have no idea how those of us with no off street parking are supposed to charge them. Has this all been considered? I reckon second hand petrol car prices are going to soar even further as we get nearer to 2030.

I’ve had an EV for 4 years. Our battery is as good as it was when we got it.

batteries wearing out was a “thing” for the first generation of EVs but really isn’t anymore. An EV built today should have as long a lifespan as a a petrol car. Even if it does require a new battery - and yes that does have environmental considerations of course- bear in mind that at least in financial terms you would have a spent an lawful lot less servicing and fixing it up to that point. There is very little to go wrong on an EV.

Agree with all of this. The money should be spent on more effective public transport outside of our cities. Park and ride that is actually quicker than driving. More sustainable towns. Reducing packaging and transportation of goods, more sustainable building regs for new builds, investment in renewables that can meet variable demand such as tidal or HEP.

How does this work? Is this for all EVs???

Battery degradation is not overstated imo.
i have a colleague with a second hand leaf who frequently has to pop into town to charge it for the trip home if the weather is bad ( probably about 15-18 miles to her house)
I used to use batteries to power electric fences. The old type of battery would last for years and withstand many many recharges, the Li ion ones are fab for the first few months, then rapidly give up the ghost once they have been exposed to extremes of temp, refusing to hold their charge.
This will be an issue for those who seem to think they can use their old car batteries to supply their house, once these batteries start to become damaged they won’t hold their charge for use in the house either.

Love the people coming on with anecdotal stories about people they know whose EVs are shit, yet those with EVs are all saying battery degradation isnt a big issue.

Believe the people who actually own an EV!

@onefinemess
As an aside, they have just started to tap an oil field in Namabia, which is the largest ever doscoverd and could supply the majority of the world's oil needs for decades to come. That's ONE refinery, in one country, not 1000s of lithium mines, spread across half the world.

A quick Google shows me that the Namibian field is about 3 billion barrels. World daily consumption of oil is about 94 million.
So the oil field will supply about 32 days of world supply.

The harsh truth is that in decades to come most of us won't be driving cars at all, ICE or EV, because we won't be able to afford the prices.
By 'we' I mean most of the global middle class who currently do drive.
Driving will become the preserve of the very wealthy.

If there weren't problems, the price of EVs wouldn't be plummeting at the same time as petrol/diesel cars are soaring. So I agree, don't use anecdotes, use the data. Electric cars aren't the answer & they discriminate against the poorer & working class

The prices are dropping because the price of electricity is so high, not because of battery degradation

Snap. I bought a diesel for towing and it will do 20 years or more before I give it up. An EV I also have an have no problem in spending £8k on a battery to give me a few more years.

People love to have a spanking new car yet jet off on holidays in planes that are 25 and 30 years old. With holes in and duct tape in places.

Not anecdotal to share my experience of Li ion batteries at all, i was using them daily. They simply do not last, especially in extremes of temp, as often experienced in the UK

People I know with an electric car have either the battery or the car on hire rather than buying it.
Ours is a company car, and they do all the maintenance. Other people I know just hire the battery, and the company will replace it when needed.

All well and good but it got me thinking: the batteries in EVs wear out after 100,000 miles or 10 years. A replacement battery is currently around £8000.
But you deduct the value you get credited for trading in your old battery. The actual cost is quite reasonable - a colleague is on their second Prius battery.

As battery technology improves and the battery refurbishment/recycling infrastructure grows the overall costs of EV ownership are going to continue to drop.